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Title: Holman Hunt
Masterpieces in Colour
Author: Mary E. Coleridge
Release Date: June 7, 2011 [EBook #36347]
Language: English
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Cover
MASTERPIECES
IN COLOUR
EDITED BY
[i]
T. LEMAN HARE
HOLMAN HUNT
1827-1910
Portrait of the Artist by Himself at Fifteen
Holman Hunt
BY MARY E. COLERIDGE
ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT
REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUR
[ii]
[iii]
[iv]
[v]
Logo
LONDON: T. C. & E. C. JACK, LTD.
NEW YORK: FREDERICK A. STOKES CO.
CONTENTS
Page
I.
The Painter’s Youth (1827-1854)
11
II.
The East
48
III.
The Subject Pictures
58
IV.
Portraits and Other Works
74
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Plate
I. Portrait of Holman Hunt at the age of Fifteen
Frontispiece
By kind permission of the painter
Page
II. The Two Gentlemen of Verona
14
From the Birmingham Art Gallery
III. Isabella and the Pot of Basil
24
From the painting in the possession of Mrs. James Hall
IV. The Light of the World
34
From the painting in Keble College Chapel, Oxford
V. The Scapegoat
40
From the painting in possession of Sir Cuthbert Quilter, Bart.
VI. The Triumph of the Innocents
50
[vi]
[vii]
[viii]
[ix]
U
W. H. H.
From the painting lent by the painter to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
VII. The Hireling Shepherd
60
From the painting in the Manchester Art Gallery
VIII. May Morning
70
By kind permission of the painter
William Holman Hunt
I
THE PAINTER’S YOUTH (1827-1854)
“Art is too tedious an employment for any not infatuated with it.”
“The only artists I ever knew who achieved work of note in any sense whatever, went first through a steady training of several years
and afterwards entered their studios with as unwearying a punctuality as business men attend their offices, worked longer hours than
these, and had fewer holidays, partly because of their love for art, but also because of their deep sense of the utter uselessness of
grappling with the difficulties besetting the happy issue of each contest, except at close and unflinching quarters.”
“I have many times in my studio come to such a pass of humiliation that I have felt that there was no one thing that I had thought I
could do thoroughly in which I was not altogether incapable.”
PON a wintry afternoon in London, in the year 1834, a little boy of six years old was standing on the stairs of a
poor artist’s house, watching, through a window in the wall, the marvellous deeds of the man within. The man
within was painting the “Burning of the Houses of Parliament.” Scarlet and gold! Scarlet and gold! He used them
up so quickly that he had to grind and prepare more and more. Every time he ground with the muller on the slab a fresh
supply of vermilion and chrome yellow, there was a fresh flare up of the conflagration, another outburst of applause
from the little boy. Meantime, the artist’s wife put the kettle on the fire, and cut bread and butter as if nothing out of the
way were going on; and by-and-by she and the father and their children sat down to tea. It seemed very strange to the
little watchman that they could behave in this calm, everyday manner when such wonders were all about them in the
room. Presently a porter came from a warehouse in Dyer’s Court, Aldermanbury, where dwelt a merchant, Mr.
William Hunt; and he took the little boy home to his father.
[x]
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[13]
PLATE II.—THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
PLATE II.—THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF
VERONA. (Painted in 1852)
The subject of this picture is taken from the last act of Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of
Verona.” It will be remembered that Proteus and Valentine had each gone from Verona to
Milan to improve by travel and by seeing the wonders of the world abroad. Later on Julia,
whose love Proteus had won, followed him disguised as a page, only to discover that the
false, fickle, and treacherous wooer was endeavouring to supplant his friend Valentine in the
affections of Sylvia, the Duke’s daughter. But Valentine, interposing at the critical moment,
rescued her. This is the moment the artist depicts. The scene is one of pure bright sunlight, in
which the brilliant colours of the gay costumes tell out with almost startling vividness. In the
background are seen advancing the outlaws, with the Duke and Thurio whom they have
captured. It adds an interest to the picture to know that Sylvia was painted from Miss Siddall,
who afterwards became the wife of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The beech-tree forest scenery was
painted in Lord Amherst’s park at Knowle, Kent.
The picture is in the Birmingham Art Gallery.
Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
This little boy had been born on the 2nd April 1827, in Wood Street, Cheapside, and was christened William Holman
at St. Giles’s, Cripplegate. From the time that he could hold anything he held a pencil. When he was about four years
old he begged for a brush and some paints, and his joy is thus described:
“How I idolised the implements when they were in my possession! The camel-hair pencil, with its translucent quill, rosy-
coloured silk binding up its delicate hair at the base, all embedded together as in amber, was an equal joy with the gem-like
cakes of paint. I carried them about with me in untiring love. A day or two of this joy had not exhausted it, when, alas, alas,
the brush was lost! Search proved to be all in vain. I remember going around and over every track about the house and
garden. Waking up from sorrowing sleep, in which my continuing pain had been finally relieved by a dream of the lost treasure
lying ensconced in some quiet corner, I hurried to the spot, only to find it vacant. The loss was the greater trouble because it
was my first terrible secret. That my father should ever forgive me for losing so beautiful an object was to my distracted mind
impossible. What could be done? My hair was straight, fine, and of camel brush hue. I cut off pieces to test its fitness for the
office of paint-brush, and as I held a little lock I found that it would spread the tints fairly well; but what to do for a handle?
Quill pens were too big, and I could not see how they could be neatly shortened. A piece of firewood carefully cut promised
to make a more manageable stick. With my utmost skill I shaped this, and with a little length of coloured cotton I bound a
stubborn sprout of hair upon the splint. I was disconcerted to find that it formed a hollow tube. It seemed perverse of fate to
ordain that just in the handle where it was needed to be hollow it should be solid, and that the hair which should be solid would
form an empty pipe. Attempts to drill the stick into a tube failed, but there was an expedient for making the tuft fuller. Cutting
a cross cleft in the bottom of the wood, I inserted a straight length of hair, which I then rebound with its crimson thread. With
gum I managed patiently to bind down loose ends and to give an improving gloss to the whole. My fears grew apace, since
every hour there was a danger of inquiry for the lost pencil. I summoned up, therefore, an assumption of assurance, trusting
that my father would see no difference between my brush and his. I went forward to him, holding the trophy very tenderly
lest it should fall to pieces. He turned his eyes, they became bewildered, his usual loving look made a frown from him the
more to be dreaded. I fortified my spirit, saying, ‘Thank you very much, father, for your brush.’ He took it with, ‘What’s
this?’ and turned it over. Breathless I sobbed; he burst out laughing, and so brought a torrent of tears to my eyes. He
exclaimed, ‘Oh, I see, it’s my brush, is it?’ caught me up and tossed me aloft several times, ending with a scrubbing on my
cheek from his close-shaven chin. This was the reception of my first work of art.”[1]
[14]
[15]
[16]
The warehouse was a mysterious place full of laughter and talk by day; empty, silent, and vast at night when the master
went over it with a bull’s-eye lantern. A funny man called Henry Pinchers busied himself with velvet binding on the third
floor. The jests of Henry Pinchers were of infinite charm. He had had to take two steps back for every step forward, he
declared, one cold morning. “Then how did you get to the warehouse at all?” asked his delighted auditor. “Don’t you
see, you silly boy, I turned round and walked backwards!” said Henry Pinchers.
Other people were not much more clear than he in their answers to questions. Temple Bar was so called “because there
was no other name”; and the martyrs were burnt at Smithfield “because they were martyrs.” Whether the child found
more satisfaction at the school to which, soon after, he was sent, does not appear. The lessons from the New
Testament read to him there made a deep impression upon his mind, and were remembered in years to come. “The gain
in thoughtfully-spent life is the continual disturbance of absolute convictions.” But there are certain convictions of
childhood which are never effaced.
The choice of a profession was not left to the last moment in those days. He was but twelve when his father asked him
what he would like to be. “A painter!” he said at once; and the sorrowful silence that followed told him what he knew
already—that his choice was not looked on with approval.
His father had taken him away from school, and was about to find for him a situation in which he would have to go
about with invoices for goods from nine in the morning till eight at night. No time for drawing; no time for painting in
scarlet and gold! The idea did not harmonise with his presentiment of that which had to be. He set about to look for a
place for himself, and explained the various qualifications that he possessed in the way of reading, writing, and
arithmetic, to the master of a boy-friend who was leaving that gentleman’s office. After some friendly chaff as to why he
had not thought of enlisting as a Grenadier, to which he replied in all good faith, “I really should like your place better,”
his services were accepted, and his father—amused, and gratified, no doubt, by the master’s ready interest in the boy
—consented that he should stay.
The master, Mr. James, drew and painted himself. Far from discouraging his apprentice, he gave him his own box of
oil-colours with directions how to prepare them; draughtsmanship was studied at a night school for mechanics, and the
little salary expended on weekly lessons from a portrait-painter who had learnt from a pupil of a pupil of Sir Joshua
Reynolds. His father, who had permitted this, was displeased, however, to find that on Mr. James’s retirement he had
time to visit the National Gallery; and once again, to avoid more unendurable subjection, he secured a place at the
London Agency of Richard Cobden’s Manchester business. Here he sat by himself in a little room that looked out on
three blank walls, made entries in a ledger, pondered over the Bible stories heard at school, and the far-away land
where they happened, drew pen-and-ink flies on the window with such accurate realism that his employer took out a
handkerchief to brush them away, designed patterns for calicoes—taught by an occasional clerk. Here, too, he painted
the portrait of an old orange-woman called Hannah, a Jewess, who came into the office and asked him to buy of her; “if
only for a handsel to break her ill-luck of the morning.”
The portrait was such a good likeness that the employer laughed aloud when he saw it; the fame of the thing spread fast.
One night his father told him of this remarkable picture, adding that he certainly ought to see it; but no sooner had he
discovered the artist than he threatened to take him away altogether if stricter discipline were not observed. Hunt was
now sixteen; he had borne with the city for four years; if he waited until he came of age it would be too late to think of
art as a profession. He took his life into his own hands, and declared that he meant to become a student at the Royal
Academy, that he must be allowed to draw at the British Museum that he might qualify himself to pass the entrance
examination.
He just contrived to make both ends meet by copy and portrait work three days out of the six. He learnt more from
fellow-students than from masters. The first real instruction came from a pupil of Wilkie’s, who told him, as he sat
copying “The Blind Fiddler,” that Wilkie painted without dead colour underneath, and finished each bit in turn like a
fresco-painter. After this he found out for himself that quattrocentist work was very beautiful, and that the beauty of it
was due to the early training of the artists in fresco. He was by nature hasty and impatient, and the city portrait-painter
had encouraged rather than checked a tendency to handle his tools with loose bravura. He set himself to unlearn these
lessons, to work with accurate and humble patience.
The hardest part of the endeavour had yet to come. Twice over he failed to find his name upon the list of those
accepted as probationers for the Academy. Another precious year gone! His father appealed to him to give it up. “You
are wasting time and energy. You can paint well enough to make friends admire you; but you cannot compete with
others, who have genius to begin with, who have received an excellent education. Are you not yourself convinced?” The
sense of discouragement was bitter. Six months more he asked for one other trial; if, for the third time, he failed, he
would go back to business.
One day, as he stood at work in the Museum, a boy dressed in a velvet tunic, and belt, his bright brown hair curling
over a turned-down white collar, darted aside as he went by, gazed attentively at the drawing for a minute or two, and
was off again. He knew the boy, for he had seen him take the Gold Medal at the Academy over the head of all the
older students. He returned the visit on his way through the Elgin room, where young Millais was at work on the
Ulysses. Quickly the younger artist turned round.
“I say, are not you the fellow doing that good drawing in No. XIII. room? You ought to be at the Academy.”
[17]
[18]
[19]
[20]
[21]
[22]
“That is exactly my opinion. But, unfortunately, the Council have twice decided the other way.”
“You just send the drawing you are doing now, and you’ll be in like a shot. You take my word for it; I ought to know; I’ve
been there as a student, you know, five years. I got the first medal last year in the antique, and it’s not the first given me, I
can tell you.… I say, tell me whether you have begun to paint? What? I’m never to tell; it is your deadly secret. Ah! ah! ah!
that’s a good joke! You’ll be drawn and quartered without even being respectably hung by the Council of ‘Forty’ if you are
known to have painted before completing your full course in the antique. Why, I’m as bad as you, for I’ve painted a long
while. I say, do you ever sell what you do? So do I. I’ve often got ten pounds, and even double. Do you paint portraits?”
“Yes,” I said; “but I’m terribly behind you.”
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Well, I’m seventeen,” I replied.
“I’m only fifteen just struck; but don’t you be afraid. Why, there are students of the Academy just fifty and more. There’s old
Pickering; he once got a picture into the Exhibition, and he quite counts upon making a sensation when he has finished his
course; but he is very reluctant to force on his genius. Will you be here to-morrow?”
“No,” I whispered; “it’s my portrait day, but don’t betray me. Good-bye.”
“Don’t you be down in the mouth,” he laughed out, as I walked away more light-hearted than I had been for months.[2]
PLATE III.—ISABELLA, OR THE POT OF BASIL
PLATE III.—ISABELLA, OR THE POT OF BASIL
When Isabella found her murdered lover’s grave in the forest she brought home his head in
anxious secrecy.
[23]
[24]
[25]
Keats.
“Then in a silken scarf—sweet with the dews
Of precious flowers pluck’d in Araby,
And divine liquids come with odorous ooze
Through the cold serpent pipe refreshfully,—
She wrapp’d it up; and for its tomb did choose
A garden pot, wherein she laid it by,
And cover’d it with mould, and o’er it set
Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet.
And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun,
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new morn she saw not: but in peace
Hung over her sweet Basil evermore
And moisten’d it with tears unto the core.”
The picture is lent by Mrs. James Hall to the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-on-Tyne.
Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
At the next examination Hunt passed. “I told you so. I knew you’d soon be in,” said Millais, when next they met at the
Academy. It was the beginning of one of those rare friendships that make high things possible.
In the room at 83 Gower Street, where Millais painted while his mother sat at her work-table, Holman Hunt was now
often to be found.
“They both help me, I can tell you,” said Millais, as he stood with one hand on his father’s shoulder, and the other on Mrs.
Millais’ chair. “He’s really capital, and does a lot of useful things. Look what a good head he has. I have painted several of the
old doctors from him. By making a little alteration in each, and putting on different kinds of beards; he does splendidly.
Couldn’t be better, could he? And he sits for hands and draperies too. And as for mamma, she reads to me and finds me
subjects. She gets me all I want in the way of dresses and makes them up for me, and searches out difficult questions for me
at the British Museum—in the library, you know. She’s very clever, I can tell you.” He stooped down and rubbed his curly
head against her forehead, and then patted the “old daddy,” as he called him, on the back. The father was then only about
forty-seven.…[3]
Many and eager were the discussions that took place among the students. Hunt’s first visit to the National Gallery, while
he was still at the office, had not been altogether a success. The Age of Brown was flourishing. “Bacchus and Ariadne”
was brown then. In fact when, some few years later, it was cleaned, and the original colours appeared, many people
said they preferred it brown. Lost in the brown air, and quite unable to derive any pleasure from “Venus attired by the
Graces,” the new-comer, standing in front of Titian’s masterpiece, inquired where were “the really grand paintings of the
great master’s?”
“That picture before you, sir, of ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’ is one of the finest specimens existing of the greatest colourist in the
world.” Here the custodian stopped to understand my paralysed expression. “Can’t you see its beauty, sir?” “Not much, I
must confess,” I slowly stammered; “it is as brown as my grandmother’s painted tea-tray.” He stared hopelessly and then left
me, only adding as a parting shot, “In the other rooms there are some wonderful Rubens, a consummate Guido, and
miraculous heads by Vandyke, and several supremely fine Rembrandts; they will at least equal your grandmother’s tea-tray;
perhaps you’ll be able to see some beauty in them.”[4]
It took wonderful courage in those days to go on thinking that grass and trees were green, when all the eminent teachers
maintained that so far as Art was concerned, they were brown, and that if you only painted them brown for several
years “an eye for Nature” would come. They were green, however, at Ewell in Surrey, whither the young artist went
one autumn. While he was there, his first picture, “Woodstock,” was sold for £20. Furthermore, a fellow-student
borrowed from Cardinal Wiseman vol. i. of “Modern Painters,” and lent it to him for twenty-four hours. He sat up most
of the night to read it.
He had fished out a copy of Keats from a box marked “This lot 4d.,” and determined to paint a scene from “The Eve of
St. Agnes.” “It’s like a parson,” said Millais, laughing—a curious commentary on the reading of “Isabella”; but he soon
came round. Millais had begun to assert his independence of judgment, to the no small wrath of his mother.
“Johnnie is behaving abominably,” she said. “I want you, Hunt, to hear; you would not believe it; he shuts us out of the studio
altogether; he is there now all alone. For twelve days now neither his father nor I have been allowed to enter the room. I
appeal to you; is that the way to treat parents? He cannot expect to prosper, can he, now? I hope you will tell him so.”
At this point a voice was heard from the studio. “Is not that Hunt? Don’t mind what they say. Come here.”[5]
[26]
[27]
[28]
Some time afterwards, a wonderful conversation on the relative merits of the Old Masters was interrupted by a quiet
knock at the door.
“Who’s there?” asked my companion.
“I have brought you the tea myself,” said the mother.
I was hurrying forward when Millais stopped me with his hand, and a silent shake of the head.
“I really can’t let you in, mamma; please put the tray down at the door, and I’ll take it in myself.”
The mother made one more attempt; in vain. On went the talk. When Hunt had risen to say Good-bye,
“Oh no!” said Millais, “you must come in and see the old people,” which brought to my mind the prospect of a terrible quarter
of an hour.
Johnnie burst into the sitting-room, I came very bashfully behind. “Now, we’ve come to have a nice time with you, mamma
and papa.”
“We don’t wish,” said the mother, “to tax your precious time at all; we have our own occupations to divert us and engage our
attention,” and the crochet needles were more intently plied.
“Hoity-toity, what’s all this? Put down your worsted work at once. I’m going to play backgammon with you directly;” and he
straightway fetched the board from its corner, and laid it on the table before her.
“You know, Hunt, how shamefully he has been behaving, and I appeal to you to say whether it is not barefacedness to come
in and treat us as though nothing had occurred,” appealed the mother.
The us was chosen because at the time Johnnie had gone to his father with the guitar, placing it in his hand and remarking, as
he put his arms round the paternal shoulders: “Now, as we are too busy in the day to see one another, it’s more jolly that we
should do so after work, so just you be a dear old papa, and now prove to Hunt what a splendid musician you are. Hunt used
to practise the violin once, but his family didn’t like it, and he could not be annoying them in music and painting, too, so he
gave up his fiddling; but he’s very fond of music. You play that exquisite air out of Rigoletto!” And then turning to me he
added, “There’s no one in England has such an erect back as he has;” while to him he railingly said, “You want pressing, like a
shy young lady.”
His father was, however, already tuning the strings, when his son went over to the still irreconcilable mother, took her needles
away, kissed her, and wheeled her in the chair round to the table where the opened chess-board was arranged awaiting her.
The father had already commenced the air, which at my solicitation he repeated, and afterwards played “The Harmonious
Blacksmith.” The radiant faces of both parents gradually witnessed to their content; while the son beat time to the music, he
paid no less attention to the game with the mother.
The two boys worked hard. They sat up all night long in Millais’ studio; they kept themselves awake with coffee; they
encouraged one another with talk; when Millais was tired to death of his own picture he worked on Hunt’s, and Hunt
on his. “Cymon and Iphigenia” and “The Eve of St. Agnes” were sent in to the Academy at eleven o’clock on the last
night possible for sending in at all, and next day, in the exuberance of their joyful relief, they accompanied the Chartist
procession to Kensington Common—Millais keen to see more of the fray than his companion thought prudent.
One great disappointment bravely borne by Millais, marked the Academy of that year; “Cymon and Iphigenia” was not
hung. Hunt, however, gained an outspoken admirer in the person of an Italian student, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. “The
best picture there!” said he, as he stood before “The Eve of St. Agnes,” and he said it loudly too. He did not admire it
the less because the subject was taken from Keats, whom he adored. He loved and studied “the Golden Gates of
Ghiberti”—another point of agreement. He was passionately fond of Art, but dejected by the enforced study of glass
bottles under the stern guidance of Ford Madox Brown. What was he to do? He could not go on with those bottles.
Hunt consented that they should share a studio: and he became an ardent, fascinating, but very troublesome learner. He
hummed and moaned, rocking himself to and fro as he sat thinking; he raved and raged while he was painting, causing
angelic little girl models to weep; he sat up night after night before his easel, eating or sleeping as the fit came upon him.
He was perpetually encircled by a crowd of noisy followers, and he had a most inconvenient way of showing them
everything in the studio, and asking them all to supper when the cupboard was bare—a very different friend from the
un-Bohemian Millais, who in those days would not even smoke a pipe.
“I have always been told by artists that a pipe is of incalculable comfort to the nerves, that when harassed by the
difficulties of a problem it solaces them.”
“That is the very reason, it seems to me, for not smoking. A man ought to get relief only by solving his problem,” said
Millais.
Very different, too, from the genial atmosphere of his home was that of the Rossetti household, where there were
strange gatherings of Italian exiles by the hearth.
[29]
[30]
[31]
[32]
[33]
W. H. H.
PLATE IV.—THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
PLATE IV.—THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
“Behold, I stand at the door and knock.”
“My types were of natural figures such as language had originally employed to express
transcendental ideas, and they were used by me with no confidence that they would interest
any other mind than my own. The closed door was the obstinately shut mind, the weeds the
cumber of daily neglect, the accumulated hindrances of sloth; the orchard the garden of
delectable fruit for the dainty feast of the soul. The music of the still small voice was the
summons to the sluggard to awaken and become a zealous labourer under the Divine Master;
the bat flitting about only in darkness was a natural type of ignorance; the kingly and priestly
dress of Christ, the sign of His reign over the body and the soul to them who could give their
allegiance to Him and acknowledge God’s over-rule. In making it a night scene, lit mainly by
the lantern carried by Christ, I had followed metaphorical explanation in the Psalms, ‘Thy word
is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path,’ with also the accordant allusions by St. Paul
to the sleeping soul, ‘The night is far spent, the day is at hand.’”
The picture hangs in Keble College Chapel, Oxford.
Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
“Then you are Pre-Raphaelite!” the other students cried, laughing, when self-willed Hunt quoted Sir Charles Ball to
prove that the action of the demoniac boy in Raphael’s “Transfiguration” was all wrong. The word was caught up,
turned into a challenge, P and R, two of the mystic initials that were so soon to charm and to enrage London, were
formed. The B was added at the suggestion of Rossetti, whose love of the mediæval at once required a “Brotherhood.”
Need it be said that there had to be seven Brothers, and that the Brotherhood was to be kept a secret? Rossetti’s
brother William, who had never learnt how to draw; a nominal pupil of Hunt’s, F. G. Stephens, who had never learnt
how to paint; Woolner, who was a sculptor, and James Collinson, were quickly enlisted. “Collinson,” said Rossetti, “is
a born stunner.”
“Where’s your flock?” shouted out Millais. “I expected to see them behind you. Tell me all about it.”
They held their first meeting in his studio, over a set of engravings of the frescoes in the Campo Santo at Pisa. The three
leaders were all, at this time, eager to establish some starting-point for their art “which would be secure, if it were ever
so humble.” They admired what was true in the works of Raphael as much as any one else. “Pre-Raphaelitism is not
Pre-Raphaelism,” but they held that, since his day, pride and the dogged observance of rule without reference to Nature
[34]
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W. H. H.
had destroyed sincerity. As they turned over the pages of the book, they hailed with delight in the old frescoes of
Gozzoli that “freedom from corruption, pride, and disease” for which they sought. “Think what a revelation it was to
find such work at such a moment, and to recognise it with the triple enthusiasm of our three spirits!” They all agreed that
they would make a series of designs from Keats in the new manner. Millais’ “Lorenzo and Isabella,” in his friends’
judgment the most wonderful picture ever painted by a man under twenty, was the immediate fruit of this resolve.
Nature had gifted Rossetti with a hopeful temperament which was of no small service to Hunt in the dark days of
discouragement that followed. When the latter was tempted to mourn over the waste of his young years in the city, the
former pointed out to him that he had learnt to know men, and the ways of men, instead of mere bookish things that
were “of very little use in life.” What did it matter whether the sun went round the earth or the earth went round the sun?
What did anything scientific matter in comparison with Dante, with the poetry of Browning, which he would recite, over
the fire, by twenty pages at a time, with Tennyson and Henry Taylor and Coventry Patmore?[6] When Mr. James, the
city man, the owner of the original colour-box, reduced Hunt to despair by his damning criticism of the new picture
“Rienzi,” “But the man’s a born fool!” exclaimed Rossetti, with screams of laughter. When pounds, shillings, and pence
ran low, “Can you not understand,” said he, “that there are hundreds of young aristocrats and millionaires growing up
who will be only too glad to get due direction how to make the country as glorious as Greece was, and as Italy?” In
Paris, in Belgium, in the country he was the most delightful of companions, and it was he who led as the Brethren
walked up and down Stanhope Street after their work, singing the Marseillaise or Mourir pour la patrie.
Throughout his youth, however, Rossetti acted on impulse, without consideration as to the effect upon others. When it
was time to send in for the Academy he was not quite ready with the charming picture painted in Hunt’s studio, and, for
the sake of a few more days in which to finish, he sent instead to the Hyde Park Gallery, which opened a week earlier
than Burlington House. “The Girlhood of Mary, Virgin,” signed with the mystic P.R.B., the meaning of which was then
unknown, except to the seven Brothers, appeared, therefore, a week earlier than Hunt’s “Rienzi” and Millais’ “Lorenzo
and Isabella,” signed with the same initials, and, for good and for evil, Rossetti began to be spoken of as the precursor
of a new school. The effect on him was twofold. Unable to endure hostile criticism, at the first touch of it, the year after,
when he showed “The Annunciation,” he resolved that he would never again exhibit in public; but, pleased at the pre-
eminence given him by those who were not behind the scenes, he withdrew from partnership with Hunt in the studio;
and more and more, as time went on, from his society and that of Millais.
PLATE V.—THE SCAPEGOAT
PLATE V.—THE SCAPEGOAT
“The Apostles regarded it (the Scapegoat) as a symbol of the Christian Church, teaching both
them and their followers submission and patience under affliction.… One important part of the
ceremony was the binding a scarlet fillet round the head of this second goat when he was
conducted away from the Temple, hooted at with execration, and stoned until he was lost to
sight in the wilderness. The High Priest kept a portion of this scarlet fillet in the Temple, with
the belief that it would become white if the corresponding fillet on the fugitive goat had done
so, as a signal that the Almighty had forgiven their iniquities.… The whole image is a perfect
one of the persecution and trials borne by the Apostolic Church, and perhaps by the Church,
as subtly understood, to this day.”
The picture was originally called “Azazel”: it was painted near Oosdoom by the Dead Sea.
“Every minute the mountains became more gorgeous and solemn, the whole scene more
unlike anything ever portrayed. Afar all seemed of the brilliancy and preciousness of jewels,
while near, it proved to be only salt and burnt lime, with decayed trees and broken branches
brought down by the rivers feeding the lake. Skeletons of animals, which had perished for the
most part in crossing the Jordan and the Jabbok, had been swept here, and lay salt-covered,
so that birds and beasts of prey left them untouched. It was a most appropriate scene for my
subject, and each minute I rejoiced more in my work.”
Sir Cuthbert Quilter is the owner of this picture.
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Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
“Rienzi” honourably hung in the large room, pendant to “Lorenzo and Isabella,” made a favourable impression, but was
not sold until after the closing of the Academy; and meantime, the landlord seized Hunt’s books, furniture, and sketches,
and he was obliged to return to his family. As soon as he could he paid the man, who thought he had been “shamming
poverty.” At one time he was not able to post a letter because he had not even a penny wherewith to buy the stamp; as
he threw himself back on a chair, he thrust his hand between the back and the seat, and lo, it came in contact with half-
a-crown! When he went to Lambeth to paint the background of “Claudio and Isabella,” the man who carried his traps
was so much better dressed that the porter was taken for the artist. Still, he was in good heart, and he and Millais,
eager to improve the reputation already gained, were hard at work upon two large works, “Christians escaping from
Persecuting Druids” and “Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop,” when all at once a derisive paragraph appeared in one of the
papers, betraying the significance of the three letters, P.R.B., and holding up the new school to ridicule. Munro the
sculptor had wormed the secret out of Rossetti, and, after promising not to tell, he had passed it on to a journalist.
The storm of anger which followed was curiously out of proportion to the cause. The Germ, a magazine started at
Rossetti’s instigation, to be the organ of Pre-Raphaelites, would have failed, it may be, in any case, for lack of funds;
but jealousy, and that hatred of light which is peculiar to old institutions, can alone account for the venomous reception
of the new pictures, when once the secret of the letters became known. The Academy sprang to arms; the older artists,
and their pupils, waxed furious. They enlisted literature on their side. Dickens joined in the hue and cry. With the
honourable exception of The Spectator, every single paper attacked the men who had dared to break with tradition.
Raphael had been insulted; Raphael was, it appeared, the idol of all England.
Ruskin came, flashing, to the rescue a year later, with a letter to The Times, in which he declared that since the days of
Albert Dürer, there had been nothing in art so earnest or so complete as the pictures of Millais and Holman Hunt. They
were not this year hung together; they were placed in a less favourable light. The onslaughts of the press were well
sustained. “Valentine and Sylvia” (the subject taken from Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona”) had suffered, in
part, from Hunt’s distress of mind and the want of means occasioned by the bad conduct of a man whom he trusted;
even after Ruskin’s letter no one ventured to buy. Nobody came to him for a portrait now. His father’s acquaintance in
the city offered to bet £10 that any picture of his would be sent back within a week. Anonymous insults poured in upon
him. A publisher, who had asked for illustrations of Longfellow, declined to publish them. Debt was staring him in the
face, and failure seemed absolute.
At this crisis of fortune, when he had resolved that he must give up Art and adopt some other line of life—preferably
that of a settler in the backwoods—Millais came forward. He had freed himself from personal straits only a week or
two earlier; now, with the warm concurrence of his father and mother, he offered to share every penny he had with his
friend. His generous will to help overcame all resistance; the money—repaid the following year—was advanced; and
the two Brothers went off to Surbiton together, to paint “Ophelia” and “The Hireling Shepherd.” “Valentine and Sylvia”
had been retouched and sent to Liverpool, where a prize of £50 was offered for the finest painting.
Never did the two gentlemen, even in their native Verona, provoke more comment than followed their footsteps
wherever they appeared in England. Immediately, anonymous insults in letters and papers began again. Week after
week went by; there was not a word from the authorities. At last it grew intolerable. The painter turned on his
tormentors. He had never seriously expected such distinction for a moment; but he determined to write to the
committee, and ask, by way of bitter satire, why the prize had not been awarded to him. Happily, his designs, and a
book in which he was interested, kept him up too late to begin that night. Next morning, as he sat at work not far from
the house, he heard Millais’ voice, “Another letter from Liverpool”! “Valentine and Sylvia” had won the prize; and they
gave three cheers for the Council in chorus.
The happy days of comradeship at the old, ghost-haunted house called Worcester Park Farm glided by all too fast.
Millais became intent upon “The Huguenot”; Hunt continued “The Hireling Shepherd” while the sun shone; after dark he
threw his strength into “The Light of the World.” Whenever the moon was full, although it was so cold that people
skated in the daytime, he would work out-of-doors from nine at night until five the next morning. For the most part he
enjoyed undisturbed solitude, but now and then a friendly guardian of the public peace came to see what he was about.
“Have you seen other artists painting landscape about here?” he inquired.
“I can’t exactly say as I have at this time o’ night,” said the policeman.
His nocturnal studies continued to arouse interest even after the return to London. As he was coming back to Chelsea
on a ’bus one night the driver entertained him with descriptions of the eccentric persons who lived there, Carlyle among
them, “and I’ve been told as how he gets his living by teaching people to write.” Then he went on confidentially, “But I’ll
show you another queer cove if you’re coming round the corner. You see him well from the ’bus. He’s a cove, in the
first place, as has a something standing all night at one winder, while he sits down at the other, or stands, and seemingly
is a-drawing of it. He doesn’t go to bed like other Christians, but stays long after the last ’bus has come in; and, as the
perlice tells us, when the clock strikes four, out goes the gas, down comes the gemman, opens the street door, runs
down Cheyne Walk as hard as he can pelt, and when he gets to the end he turns and runs back again, opens his door,
goes in, and nobody sees no more of him.”
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W. H. H.
Pre-Raphaelitism went steadily forward. “The Light of the World” was not yet ready, but the wonderful Academy of
1852 contained “The Hireling Shepherd,” Millais’ “Ophelia” and “The Huguenot,” and Ford Madox Brown’s fine
picture, painted after the same method, “Christ Washing Peter’s Feet.” “The Strayed Sheep,” a beautiful little landscape
begun for a gentleman who admired “The Hireling Shepherd,” but did not wish for so large a picture, was painted at
Fairlight, soon afterwards. At the Academy of 1853 “Claudio and Isabella” hung in the first room. In 1854 “The Light
of the World” was finished, and sold to Mr. Combe of Oxford. “The Awakened Conscience” went to the Academy the
same year.
And now a plan that had been in the artist’s mind ever since, as a child, he listened to the words of the New Testament
at school, found sudden fulfilment. The cry of the East was in his ears; he would go to the East, and paint a sacred
picture there. As on so many other occasions throughout his life, he met with violent opposition. He would lose all that
he had gained at such cost and have to begin over again on his return; he would find nothing but overgrown weeds, no
beauty that was not tenfold more beautiful in England; he would get Syrian fever and be an invalid for the rest of his
days; he would die like Wilkie. Rossetti said that local colour interfered with the poetry of design. Ruskin said that he
was giving up the real purpose of his life, which was to train a new school of art. What Millais said does not appear.
What Millais did was to help in the packing, which had been left to the last minute, so that there was no time for dinner,
and to rush to the buffet for any “likely food” that he could find and toss it into the railway carriage after the train had
begun to move.
Upon a parting gift from Rossetti were written these lines from “Philip van Artevelde”:
“There’s that betwixt us been, which we remember
Till they forget themselves, till all’s forgot,
Till the deep sleep falls on them in that bed
From which no morrow’s mischief knocks them up.”
II
THE EAST
“I regard the man who has not sojourned in a tent as one who has not thoroughly lived.”
The first period of life was over. The mystic letters were used no more; after the savage onslaughts of the press it had
been determined that Pre-Raphaelites should be recognised by their work alone, not by any arbitrary signal. Henceforth
each of the Brothers followed his own line. Marriage came in due course. Mr. Holman Hunt has been twice married; he
has two sons and a daughter.
PLATE VI.—THE TRIUMPH OF THE INNOCENTS
PLATE VI.—THE TRIUMPH OF THE INNOCENTS
“You know that in the most beautiful former conceptions of the Flight into Egypt, the Holy
Family were always represented as watched over and ministered to by attendant angels. But
only the safety and peace of the Divine Child and its mother are thought of. No sadness or
wonder of meditation returns to the desolate homes of Bethlehem.
“But in this English picture all the story of the escape, as of the flight, is told in fulness of
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Ruskin.
peace and yet of compassion. The travel is in the dead of the night, the way unseen and
unknown; but partly stooping from the starlight, and partly floating on the desert mirage,
move with the Holy Family the glorified souls of the Innocents. Clear in celestial light, and
gathered into child garlands of gladness, they look to the Child in whom they live, and yet for
whom they die. Waters of the River of Life flow before on the sands; the Christ stretches out
His arms to the nearest of them—leaning from His mother’s breast.… You may well imagine
for yourselves how the painter’s … better than magical power of giving effects of intense
light, has aided the effort of his imagination, while the passion of his subject has developed in
him a swift grace of invention which, for my own part, I never recognised in his design till
now.”
The canvas is now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. Mr. J. T. Middlemore has a replica.
Please click on the image for a larger image.
Please click here for a modern image of the painting.
“The Scapegoat”—a subject which he had thought of suggesting to Landseer—was painted by the shore of the Dead
Sea. After many negotiations, for the country was in a troubled state and he risked his life by going, he encamped there,
with a little band of followers to protect him, and a goat. Soleiman, one of the Arabs, desired—though only seven years
younger than himself—to be his son. By what name should he call him? Hunt? That was no name at all. Holman? That
was not much better. William, however, pronounced “Wullaum,” he “found very good.”
One night, when the dews fell heavily, and they were some way from the encampment, Hunt, afraid of the effect of a
chill, began waltzing—with his gun for a partner—to keep himself warm. Soleiman was overcome with amazement.
“Henceforth let me be your brother,” said he—unconscious that he had become a Pre-Raphaelite—as he flung his arms
round the neck of this wonderful man. “You are indeed inspired; you dance like a dervish; you are one. Can you do it
again?” “Yes, my brother,” and away the wonderful man went, a second and a third time, again and yet again. He was
asked to repeat the performance for the benefit of the others, who yelled with delight when they heard of it, but this he
declined to do; and the next day Soleiman invited him to marry the daughter of the sheik his uncle, and to become sheik
instead of himself when the old man died, that he might lead the tribe in battle, and act as dancing-dervish in times of
peace. Where had he been born? In London? What was London?—a mountain? or a plain? Not a city like Jerusalem
with walls and gates and shops?—“Never, my brother! I will never believe that you are a citizen—never! I know you
are an English bedawee, and you were born in a tent.” In spite of all this filial and fraternal affection, Soleiman was not
much good when danger threatened. “There are robbers,” he declared one day; “they are coming this way—one, two,
three, on horseback, and two—wait, three—yes, four on foot. You must put down your umbrella, shut up your picture,
cover it with stones. They will not be here for an hour. We will go up in the mountains.” “No,” said Hunt, he should stay
where he was, it was a good work that he had in hand; Allah would help him; he was quite content. After several
passionate appeals, off went Soleiman by himself, taking the donkey. The robbers presently appeared, seven of them,
on foot and on horseback, armed with long spears, with guns and swords and clubs. The painter painted on
unconcernedly. They drew up in a semicircle round him, and the chief shouted for water. The artist looked at him from
his head to his horse’s feet—at the others also, and then resumed his work. Again the chief clamoured. They might have
water, the artist said at last, since the day was hot; but Englishmen were not the servants of Arabs, and he was an
Englishman; they must fetch it themselves. And he continued to paint. “Are you here alone?” they inquired. “No; there
was an Arab.” Thereupon they requested that he might be called. “But I don’t want him,” said the artist. “We want
him.” “Well then, you call him. His name is Soleiman.” Soleiman, however, made no reply. “There is no one, or he
would answer,” they said distrustfully. “He is afraid. You know best how to reassure him.” At length Soleiman came
slowly down through the rocks, driving the donkey. A long conversation followed—a wonderful description by his
“brother” of the gun with two souls which he had, of the pistol that would fire more than five times without reloading, of
his accomplishments as a dancing-dervish and as a story-teller (especially about Lot), of the manner in which he wrote
all day in coloured inks the sky, the mountains, the plain, the sea, even the salt, on that large paper.
The Arabs became intensely suspicious. What could these things mean? He had the white goat led over the ground,
they supposed, to charm it. He was a magician. He would go back to England; he would wipe out the coloured inks
with a sponge; he would find the Cities of the Plain underneath; he would be lord of a great treasure. For the present
they agreed that they would let him alone; but he considered it prudent to waltz home that night.
“My dreams kept me with the Brotherhood,” he says. Once he had fallen asleep within his tent, he was back in England
among the old set, “talking of plans and thoughts beloved of both.”
The Academy hung “The Scapegoat” on the line; and it was sold for £450, but “The Finding of the Saviour in the
Temple,” begun in Jerusalem, could not be finished for some time; he was compelled to work at smaller pictures which
would bring in ready money. In the end, after a friendly consultation with his old foe, Dickens, he asked and obtained
for it £5500, the largest sum that had ever yet been paid for an English picture.
“Isabella” was painted in Florence in days of great sadness; a year after the artist completed, with his own hand, the
marble monument designed for his young wife.
“The Shadow of Death” (“Is not this the Carpenter”?) was painted on his return to the East, and yet again he went
thither, to bring back with him “The Triumph of the Innocents” and “The Holy Fire.” A number of Mahommedan ladies,
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W. H. H.
from the harem of a neighbouring “effendi,” came to the house at Jerusalem, and asked to see “The Innocents,” while it
was still in progress. The leading lady counted up the figures.
“Seventeen babies in the large picture, and several more in th...
